Boise start-up American Semiconductor : Cheaper chip-making on the way

A new Boise company believes it has developed a technology and process that will help the semiconductor industry save billions of dollars in new equipment.

That’s a lofty claim for a start-up with no manufacturing facility, a staff of seven and minimal funding. But American Semiconductor http://www.americansemi.com is slowly gaining the attention of a wide spectrum of believers, from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to UC Berkeley.

Julie Howard
The Idaho Statesman

http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040826/NEWS0202/408260328/1029/NEWS02

"There’s nothing standard about it — it’s an interesting product," said Katalin Voros, operations manager of UC Berkeley’s microlab, which last week took American Semiconductor’s process for its first test run. "It’s entirely do-able. It just requires a bit of attention and more development before they can make millions of chips with this."

The young company has four patents pending that cover processes and technology designed to cut the cost of making semiconductor chips. In short, the technology lets semiconductor companies use current equipment to achieve smaller chips.

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The August edition of Inside Chips.com, a Web-based analysis service of semiconductor startups, featured American Semiconductor and had this to say about the Boise start-up:
"Launching a pure-play semiconductor foundry is not something one sees every day, but we expect American will be able to carve out a niche that differentiates it from other SOI (silicon-on-insulator) providers. While American is quite small, the company has deep expertise in semiconductor manufacturing and process technologies and has developed a unique technology that we believe will help usher SOI into the mainstream. We perceive the company’s business plan as one that — initially, anyway — will allow it to co-exist with mammoth competitors such as IBM and Motorola instead of competing with them."

Related Links

* American Semiconductor, Inc. http://www.americansemi.com

* InsideChips.com http://www.insidechips.com

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Moving to smaller sizes lets firms make more chips per silicon wafer, which lowers costs and generates more revenue.

Usually, companies have to invest in multimillion-dollar equipment upgrades to shrink chip sizes, so if this new process proves itself, there could be ready customers in the semiconductor industry.

Since American Semiconductor was founded in late 2001, engineers have developed and mimicked the complex technology on computer software.

But it wasn’t until last week, in the UC Berkeley laboratory, that the firm was assured it was truly on the right track.

The technology, called silicon-on-insulator, produces chips that let electronic devices use less power, and American Semiconductor believes it has improved the way to use this technology.

Doug Hackler, a former director of manufacturing at Zilog Inc. in Nampa, and Steve Parke, a Boise State University associate professor of electrical engineering, teamed up to work on the technology.

Parke has taken a leave of absence from his work at BSU to work with American Semiconductor.

Hackler, president and CEO of American Semiconductor, said the technology has particular appeal to those making electronics for use in space because one of its features is that it is not affected by radiation. That has attracted the attention of the Air Force Research Lab and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, both of which have provided funding to the Boise company.

"We’ll go into pilot production next year," said Hackler, adding aerospace companies have already booked orders for early products for testing in their own devices.

Because the technology also improves yields of chips on existing semiconductor equipment, board member Tim Haney says licensing the technology to other semiconductor firms is a possibility.

"As the technology and process become more visible to the industry, I believe we’ll see some large vendors wanting to license it to apply it to their existing fabs," said Haney, a former general manager at Hewlett-Packard Co. in Boise. "My expectation is manufacturers will go nuts with the new opportunity and capabilities."

American Semiconductor will use the process with custom orders, but not in its own manufacturing facility. Semiconductor fabs carry large price tags, and Zilog earlier this year rejected an offer from American Semiconductor to buy one of Zilog’s now-shuttered semiconductor facilities in Nampa.

Undaunted, American Semiconductor is now in negotiations with two facilities outside of Idaho where it can subcontract work.

The company has been paying bills by doing custom design work for other firms, while continuing to move its signature technology, called Flexfet, along the process.

"Like any new thing, it needs nurturing," said Hackler.

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New technique to enable more resilient semiconductors

By Matthew Fordahl, Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-08-25-silicon-carbice_x.htm

In an advance that could lead to lighter spacecraft and smarter cars, researchers have developed a new technique for producing a high-quality semiconductor that’s much more resistant to extreme conditions than the silicon found in most of today’s electronics.

Devices built with the rugged material would not require cooling and other protections that add size, weight and cost to traditional silicon electronics in power systems, jet engines, rockets, wireless transmitters and other equipment exposed to harsh environments.

And because the material — silicon carbide — can be made with fewer flaws than ever before, more reliable and more complex electronics can be built with it, according to the Japanese researchers who reported their findings in Thursday’s journal Nature.

In fact, the discovery paves the way for commercial adoption of the material that’s stymied engineers for decades, said Roland Madar, a physics professor at the National Polytechnic Institute in Grenoble, France, in a commentary accompanying the research.

"These results are spectacular: The … process is a major innovation in materials science," he said. "Silicon carbide has become, at last, a contender for silicon’s crown."

Still, the Japanese researchers, led by Daisuke Nakamura of Toyota Central R&D Laboratories, believe practical uses are at least six years away, said Masato Kimura, a spokesman for the lab based in Aichi, Japan.

The problem with silicon — the basic building block of most electronics today — is that it becomes less reliable and less efficient when exposed to high temperatures or radiation.

Silicon carbide, which is so resistant to heat that its used to protect the space shuttles, is a semiconductor like silicon. It’s also nearly as hard as diamonds.

But those unique properties make it difficult to use in electronics. Because it doesn’t become liquid under high heat, it can’t undergo the traditional process that silicon undergoes to form ingots that are turned into nearly flaw-free wafers.

Instead, single silicon carbide crystals are formed by the condensation of supersaturated vapor. The process, which has been around since the 1970s, leaves many tiny structural defects, and the result is not good enough for complex devices like microprocessors or memory chips.

In fact, silicon carbide-based electronics today are simple diodes that are used in niche products such as power systems. Traditional silicon-based computers in extreme environments — whether in space or in a car — must be protected from extreme environments.

"If you need electronics at high temperatures, you need significant cooling," said T.S. Sudarshan, an electrical engineering professor at the University of South Carolina not affiliated with the research. "The size of the cooling systems will exceed the size of the device and that’s the problem."

The Japanese researchers discovered that they can build silicon carbide wafers by using a multiple step process in which the crystal is grown in several stages. As a result, defects are minimized.

Using the technique, the researchers were able to build near-perfect wafers of up to 3 inches in diameter. There’s still considerable work to be done to catch up with traditional silicon: The semiconductor industry today uses silicon wafers of up to 12 inches in diameter.

"Granted this may not be large volume for commercial (use), but even on a demonstration basis this is very significant," Sudarshan said.

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